Yes, haunting in a number of ways. Its impossible to forget about how many people died in the Gulag system, and how many of them you are riding over.

The history of the Gulags is a bizarre tale ... the Soviets discovered gold and uranium in the Kolyma region, and wanted to mine it, but they couldnt get enough volunteers to uproot and go there, so someone hit on the bright idea of sending political prisoners to build the mines and the roads. They didn't have enough of those either, so they just accelerated the rate of political prisoner arrests to meet the demands of "Dalstroy" - the enterprise founded to build the mines and the roads to them.

Ironically, the first head of Dalstroy was arrested and executed because he was too brutal, burning through too many prisoners - and the productivity rate was accordingly too low. The next guy to run Dalstroy was less barbaric to the prisoners and the productivity rate increased ... but his tenure (and life) came to an end when Mr Beria decided he was too kind to the prisoners.

It was as dangerous being the boss as being a prisoner up there.

Magadan was only founded in 1939, when they realised they needed a sea port to service the whole Gulag industry. It was built specifically to serve as the logistics and administration centre of the whole Dalstroy Gulag project.